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An app for speed reading

Have you heard about Spritz, the app that helps people read more quickly? According to Spritz, while reading, you spend only 20% of your time processing the words, while 80% of your time is spent physically moving your eyes around the page. To avoid that, Spritz flashes one word onto the screen at at a time, without forcing your eyes to move around the page.

Here, you're reading at 250 words per minute:

Now you're reading 350 words per minute:

And now 500 words per minute:

Fascinating, right? Spritz is still in development, but you can read articles right now with Spreeder. What do you think? It's a little intense for reading in bed, but might be great for work or news? xoxo

58 comments:

Cool concept, but personally I can't stand it. It hurts my eyes, even at the lower speed, and there's just something lovely about holding a book in your hands that I still cling to in this digital age.

Wow! I just read 500 words per minute!!! Woohoo! Haha. BUT, this would be awesome for just some of the reading I need to do. Otherwise, I enjoy the slow paced, relaxing process of reading a paper book- even if that means I'm wasting most of my time moving my eyes around the page. ;)

I work in literacy and I am curious how this impacts comprehension. It might increase reading fluency but I think it might impede comprehension in people who are less skilled readers. I certainly don't KNOW that so I

Personally, I found it annoying and hard to read. Once I got to 400 wpm I got more comfortable, though. I am a very speedy reader so it was too slow for me until then. I don't think I am the target demographic but if it helps people to read more quickly and efficiently, I am all for it!

This would have saved my life in school! It certainly can't replace 'comfort' reading--but as a mild dyslexic, isolation of one word without the distraction of the whole page makes a wild difference. I have always been a 'fast' reader--but mostly because I scan the page and pick up cues about where new information is unfolding; missing some detail, but gathering main facts or ideas. I will definitely buy this app when it's available.Joanna, you post such neat things--I love your blog!

Oh I can't stand it! I "hear" the words as they appear, so it seems as though the speaker is speaking very awkwardly (with the various tempi of the words changing). Plus what happens if you blink?!?!?! My husband and I are also wondering about comprehension... Speed reading has never been a problem for me, so I think I'll stick to the "old-fashioned" way for now. :)

I guessing this only really works in so much as you are very comfortable with all of the vocabulary of what you're reading and as long as the sentence structure and content isn't too complicated. Any word or sentence that would give you a moment's pause during regular reading would mean that you would have to stop the app and back up to read for context clues, look up a definition, etc.

I have to say, I read the Goldfinch based on your recommendation(or your friends recommendation I guess) and not only did I not love it, I really disliked it...though I did read the entire thing(pat on my back)! I think her prosaic writing just got to me after awhile...the book really should've been like 400 pages shorter.

Completely fascinating. As someone who does a fair amount of science reading for a living, this could be useful. I also have a colleague with visual impairment - I wonder whether this might work well for her...interesting!

I hate it. I think it takes all the joy out of reading. I suppose it would be good if one has to do a lot of non-pleasurable reading for work or school. But I would question their assertion that it improves one's comprehension. I already can't remember what I read on there.

wow this is so crazy! i think it's a good idea to have words flash at the bottom of a news screen rather than have the slowly scrolling words, but i definitely wouldn't want to read a book like this!xoxchloehttp://popcosmo.com

I'm hopefully going back to school next year, and I'm super excited to try this out with articles and other not-so-exciting reading that comes with most classwork, but probably wont' use it for pleasure reading. I wish I'd had this in undergrad! But I'm a super fast reader when I really love a book. I devoured A House In the Sky by Amanda Lindhout last week in like, 4 hours. Highly, highly recommended. I mean absurdly high. Just go read it now.

This is certainly interesting but I can't stand it! Like others mentioned, I too, hear the words in my head and it would ruin the lovely cadence and feeling of written dialogue in novels. Blinking seems like it would be a problem!

Honestly, isn't everything already fast enough? Enough is enough. For me, this is totally unnecessary. Does it make you read fast? Yes. But it doesn't seem like you'd retain any information. I love going over the pages of a book, re-reading sections and highlighting your favourite parts. I don't see that app catching on!

I've seen this around. I personally find it very stressful for my eyes. I'm wondering if someone will suffer an epileptic episode from it! I'm a speedy reader (about 700wpm for novels, lower for textbooks and the like where comprehension is much more difficult). I took a speed reading course at university with a friend and it turns out that I do one of the tricks they were teaching - my eyes gather more words per 'jump'. For instance my eyes will jump two or three times per line in a book instead of five or six. So Spritz breaking a word like 'comprehension' into three words is really annoying and pointless. Plus, if they start making news articles etc like this, you'll have to read the entire thing instead of skimming it to find what you want. So advertising will be very hard to skip over too!I also found it difficult to blink - I'd miss a word or two, which would jar me, and then I'd miss another word trying to get back into the rhythm of flashing words. Does Spritz have any recommendations for blinking? Eye drops beforehand, perhaps? ;)

I've seen this before and it kind of bums me out :-( If you can't read "fast enough" to feel satisfied by your own reading speed then only practice will improve it. You might be able to read super fast with this but I guarantee the wear and tear on your eyes will be the price you pay - and the icing on the cake? You aren't going to retain even a fraction of what you do with "traditional" reading. Not a fan!

My husband and I were discussing this app a couple of days ago. Obviously it's not suitable for all reading material, the novel I want to read in a relaxed state in bed or for him complex scientific articles but for news stories etc that you are scanning quickly anyway (and potentially trying to read during that first 15mins in the office in the morning) it could have a lot of potential.

I think I may be the only one really excited about this app and it's use for books. I seriously have no time to read. If I could break up a book into chunks of 15 minutes using this speed reader, I may actually get finished with a book every once and a while.

I have to say, I'm not sure if I'm dyslexic or what but I found this SO awesome. I tend to jump around a sentence when I'm reading on the page, skipping words for whatever reason and then having to go back, and also just skipping entire paragraphs if I find them boring! I tend to speed read books (maybe because I'm skipping half the words?!) without remembering them weeks later.

I'll definitely try this. I know this not the same as holding a book, etc. I wonder if this would help with younger readers who get bored or distracted easily?

It's sickening how they have turned such an organic habit into a brain killer!!That said, it might work for people who have to read through dozens of newspapers everyday or for all James Patterson fans who need to finish reading his dozen novels per year. And I am pretty convinced he was behind this invention...lol

Oh, I really don't like it. There's the matter of comprehension to think of, for one thing. Yes, I've heard the interviews about how it doesn't affect comprehension "too much," but if you're like me - an academic with a literature background who thrills at the opportunity to appreciate the form of writing as well as the tale being told, then this eliminates one of the most thoughtful and delicious pleasures in reading. And I think the questions raised about how effective this model is with complex writers is a good one; I challenge anyone to read Henry James' The Golden Bowl on a speed reader, hahaha!

More disconcerting to me than the comprehension issue, however, is the fact that this style of reading aims to eliminate that voice in your head that speaks the words as you read: in short, you won't *hear* the words. Now, I haven't heard about any studies about how the presence or absence of this voice could affect our emotional connection to what we read, but I've always prized my ability to hear the speech I'm reading. Indeed, as a theatre scholar, my ability to immediately pick up on the emotional nuances behind word choice, hesitation, and repetition give me powerful insights into what these characters are really thinking as opposed to what they're saying/doing (and the gap between the two tells me worlds about who they are and how they feel). If that voice in my head was silenced ... how much would I lose?

Furthermore, studies have shown that reading classic literature enhances our capacity for sympathetic comprehension of other humans and improves our ability to read people's moods and intentions. I wonder if that would still prove true when these works are speed read so quickly that one no longer attributes vocal insinuation and timbre to each word one reads?

Yes. Not for me either. Something a little sad about it. Everything must be done as fast as possible, (ideally instantly) these days. Why do we feel that reading at a normal pace (whatever your normal pace is) is not good enough anymore? Why does reading a novel have to be about efficiency? I understand that it is simply keeping up with all the other apps and technologies that streamline stuff for us, but what is the rush in falling in love with a brilliant book? Some things are good slow. We need to hang out to the last bit of patience that we have!Something I loved so much about The Goldfinch, for example, were the relationships and understandings you build with and about the characters. I am not sure this app would even give you that opportunity. Call me a luddite but I think it takes the joy out of reading, and doesn't encourage a personal relationship with the writing, author, or characters.

But I do agree with other comments about how this would be great for news articles and other non-fiction pieces.